Oh, No… We Can SMELL This Story!

CONTENT WARNING: Dead Animal (Squirrel), Gross

One summer, I was working in my garage and smelled something… funky. I looked around and tried to trace the scent but couldn’t find anything. The odor got worse over the course of a few days, and it definitely started smelling like something had died in the garage. Maybe a mouse or chipmunk? It had happened before, so I searched more thoroughly and still found nothing.

Finally, I noticed that the smell was strongest when my wife’s car was in the garage — but I could not smell anything inside the car. She took it through the car wash several times, but the smell only got worse. We searched the wheel wells, engine compartment, trunk, grill, and air intakes, and finally, I started crawling around underneath.

There it was! I could not see it from just looking underneath but only if I went under. It looked like a gray squirrel had somehow gotten caught up on the underbody and was just… hanging there. Eww!

The car was actually scheduled for service, and when my wife drove into the shop, she saw several employees wrinkle their noses and give her car nervous looks. She talked to the tech about the squirrel, and he said they would take care of it.

All we could imagine was that some poor newbie got stuck cleaning it off.

“Hey, Bob, come here. Heh heh. Clean out under this car. Do you have a clothespin?”

The service notes when we got it back just said, “Removed dead squirrel.”